Abstract

Employment issues of persons over 55 years gaining in importance, given the aging of the population in Serbia, which will continue in the next few decades. It confirms the projection of the National Statistical Office, which estimated in‐ creasing the share of workers aged 55‐64 in the workforce, from 13 per cent in 2010 to 14 per cent in 2040. This is corroborated by the fact that life expectancy has increased in recently life. Also, there have been significant changes in Serbia in the structure of unemployment in the last decade just to the detriment of these categories of workers. In fact, their employment from year to year decreases, i.e. in 2010 the number of employees in the age group 55‐64 decreased by 2.3% over the previous year (or 29,000 persons), which makes this issue very current in terms of its resolution. The aim of this paper is through research conducted on a representative sample of 100 respondents in Belgrade and Nis, provides an answer to several questions asked whose answers should confirm or refute the hypotheses we tested. We explored labor force in this age group (both sexes), which most affected by job loss and searching for new employment with focus on female. Analysis among other things is showed that if it comes to employment after years of waiting, the job is usually paid less than the previous one and that women are waiting longer than men the same age cohort .Therefore, many experts call this phenomenon age discrimination in women employment. Taking into account this fact in mind, we tried to determine its causes and to propose the measures of employment policy and direct them towards resolving the issues of gender and age discrimination in Serbia.